A Hitman
by sarahandmarquis
Summary: Erik, a well-renowned assassin, receives a request for a girl looking to end all her pain. Leroux/Kay. Five-Shot. TRIGGER WARNING: Suicide.
1. Part 1

Author's Note:

Dear Readers,

So, I originally posted this some time ago as an odd little AU on my Tumblr account, afifthcellaroccupant. Well, I've been trying to think of something short and decided to revisit it. On other news, this semester has been the worst so far for my health. I've been seriously sick twice in the past month and a half (am currently in the progress of dealing with a sinus infection), so I can't say when anything will be out. I'm taking 18 hours of my major/minors classes and trying to keep my head above water. No promises but know, I love you guys/gals and want to get you more. Just...blame it on health and term papers.

And, I will be honest here, there is talk about suicide in this. If this bothers you, please, take this trigger warning into consideration.

sarahandmarquis

* * *

It wasn't the first time he'd been asked to complete such a mission. It wasn't uncommon for people to ask for help in ending their own lives. Or pretending to do so. As was his habit, he arranged to meet with his target in order to plan how she would like for the "suicide" to go down.

They met in the park.

He was used to a certain _type _who came to him for help. Usually the rich. After all, his services weren't cheap. The women had had their hearts broken or were ruined by any number of things and wanted their lives to be over with. The men…the men were usually running scared. Debts, lovers, children, wives, drugs – any number of things were hounding them. _Make it look like a suicide_, they always asked.

And, he always complied. That's what they paid him so very well for.

She wasn't like them.

She wasn't rich, but rather middle class or he might even dare to say…poor. How she managed to cough up the cash for him, he'd never know. He was used to the desperate looks on people's faces when they waited for him. Panicked, nervous, scared – anything as they met their own personal grim reaper in person.

She looked calm, collected, sure of herself and this horrifying choice.

For the first time in years, what remained of his blackened soul screamed.

He approached her on the bench, and with a slight doff of his wide-brimmed hat, addressed her. She wasn't beautiful in the classical way. He'd killed many beautiful women in the past at their own request. They had been stunning, eye-catching, exotic. She was plain, simple, homely. Simple brown hair, simple gray eyes, a bit too pale from lack of sun.

Her eyes reflected a grief so brilliant that it nearly sent him reeling.

When she spoke, it was with a strong voice, unwavering and confident even as she attempted to fight back tears.

For the firs time in years, he asked her why.

Her fiancé had died. His dying words had blamed her for his death. She had spiraled into depression and her family didn't know how to handle it. Her father was going through major medical problems and they had just left her to heal on her own. The last straw had been overhearing her mother on the phone, saying that she was a burden with her latest mood swings. _Didn't she already have enough trouble with a husband in the hospital but now her daughter too?_

Her great aunt had died, leaving her a tidy sum for college but, college wasn't on her radar with her father's illness. She had kept enough to pay Erik and given the rest for her father's medical treatments.

She just wanted the pain to stop.

For the first time in years, Erik rejected a job.

Instead, he gave her his person cellphone number, his name, his contact information, everything. She told him her name, Christine, cried into his shoulder when her walls crumbled. He tried not to think that he'd begged her to call him whenever she felt herself slipping. She joked she'd call him every hour. He'd returned that he didn't sleep much anyway.

When they parted, she had the barest hint a smile creeping over her much too pale face and he had a new purpose to live.


	2. Part 2

She didn't call for three days.

He knew this because he had set her ringtone to be loudest one he had on his phone. The light sleeper than he was, he knew he would wake immediately to her call. The three days had him worried. He had been a few hours short of calling her and asking how she was when the heavy metal soundtrack deafened him.

He answered before the second ring.

She was in tears.

He could barely understand her but knew enough to know she just needed someone to listen. He listened. Scattered between her apologies for calling and explaining that no one was around to listen, he gathered what was happening. She was failing her classes and she had just been in a huge fight with her parents about it.

She had spent the evening in her room, crying, before she'd summoned the courage to call him. He listened patiently, giving soothing words and reassuring her she hadn't bothered him and of course he would stay on the line with her until she calmed down.

She ended up falling asleep his voice sometime around three that morning.

Once she was snoring delightfully in his ear, he hung up and texted her, requesting that she text him when she woke. And, he sent a second text that he hoped wouldn't come across as controlling, but he requested, ever so politely, that she text him at least once a day to tell him how she was feeling.

She texted him while the sleep still clung to her eyes.

Thus began a tradition.

Her daily texts turned into hourly and then lengthy conversations between them. She still called him when written words wouldn't compute her pain. More often than not, he sang herself to sleep, his haunting voice being used for good for once.

He threw six missions in the next four months in order to talk to her.

Ever the good liar, he managed to play it off and kept it from adversely affecting his career but that had stopped mattering so much now that his world spun around this homely girl who just wanted to know she wasn't alone.


	3. Part 3

He was in a black zone in the Middle East when he received a call.

He was used to her tears, to the point that he ever could be used to them. They still affected him even after a year of listening to them. He wasn't used to this. She was silent. She wouldn't, couldn't(?), tell him but quietly requested him to come to her.

He was on the first plane back to the states.

He'd like to say he swept imperiously into her home, but he didn't. He crawled through her bedroom window and found her, sitting on her bed. She looked at him, silent, haunted. Her face was dry but her eyes bled pain.

Her parents had died in a car accident that morning.

The funeral was in four days.

He sat down beside her and just held her while she finally let herself cry. He stayed the entire night, just sitting beside her on the bed, letting her sleep while he quietly sang or hummed. When her aunt checked on her, he disappeared beneath the bed, momentarily finding amusement of him hiding under a girl's bed when he'd never even been allowed in one.

Her distant family wondered why she suddenly had a man in black following her, face covered by a simple black mask. She would just shake her head at their questions and began calling him her loyal rain cloud.

She clutched at his gloved hand the entire way through the funeral.

That night, when he sat beside her in her bed, she told him her aunt had arranged for her to move far away with her. She would be living with her six cousins and going to college there.

That night, she begged him to take her away.

By the next morning there was a suicide note sitting on her pillow and a pretty girl and her loyal rain cloud driving away on his motorcycle into the sunrise. His saddle bags were filled with memories and her arms were tangled around his waist; her head pressed between his shoulder blades.

For the first time in years, he smiled into the sunlight.


	4. Part 4

She moved in into his underground house.

She didn't question his job, preferring to forget. Instead, she made the home into hers. He found throw pillows on his leather couch, a ball of yarn attached to a scarf sitting next to a cute teacup, a light pink coat hanging next to his black cloak, and his bathroom taken over by lotion and makeup. And, he noticed there was a different scent on the air, barely noticeable to his poor olfactory organs but decidedly feminine.

The first few nights, she slept on the couch until he turned a storage room into her bedroom. It was _her _bedroom. He provided the bed and his credit card in order for her to decorate it as she liked. It assaulted his eyes when he first saw it completed.

But she was smiling, and it made up for the overwhelming amount of pink and the dent in his pocketbook.

He left his door unlocked at night now, growing used to waking up the moment it creaked open and hearing her feet lightly tiptoe across the floor. Many nights her voice quietly called through the haze of sleep asking for comfort.

Her nightmares reminded him very much of his own and he refused to allow her to suffer alone as he had all his life.

The days he was home passed in a happy harmony. She taught him how to enjoy movies and video games. He taught her music and how to play the piano and violin. Her voice wasn't anything special and her playing wasn't to write home about either, but she loved it so much he happily endured the less than perfect quality of both.

Besides, there was something deeply comforting about coming home and hearing a woman's voice lilting down the halls. The many years of walking into a cold house, empty for days, were gone and he hoped they were gone for good. Now a fire would be crackling in the fireplace and the scent of supper were strong enough even for him to smell.

Or he'd come back late at night and see her sleeping with her door cracked opened to allow a bit of light from the hallway.

She looked like an angel, with her brown hair tangled around her head, the soft white blankets pulled tightly to her chin. Sure, he hadn't thought she was very beautiful in the very beginning, just an average girl. Now it was her smile that defined beauty for him, her eyes that reminded him of jewels, her laugh the only sound that complimented his music.

He loved her.

With the whole of his blackened soul, desiccated heart, and disfigured body, he loved her.


	5. Part 5

It was a winter night.

Her nightmares had been horrible the past few days as the anniversary of her parents' deaths approached. He'd spent more time sitting at her bedside then sleeping in his own coffin. Tonight, just for tonight, he'd given her some medicine to help her sleep undisturbed. How he hated the bags under her eyes.

He'd gone to bed as usual, leaving his door open should the medicine fail.

It did.

In the middle of the night, a thinly clad young woman clambered in beside him in his coffin. Even he would admit later that he had made it spacious to allow for comfortable sleeping and a peace place to lie in state forever. She didn't even try to wake him up, just curled against his side, her face buried in his night clothes as she clung to him.

Of course, she woke him the moment she entered the door.

He tried several times to pry her out of the coffin, insisted it was far too morbid considering her current state of mind. She clung to the lapels of his nightshirt and shook her head violently. After a few moments of resisting, he gave him and curled her tightly to him, holding her close to help keep her warm.

The extra blanket he usually tossed off in the night was pulled back into the bed to wrap around the pair.

She didn't sleep, just shook his arms for a while before calming and finding fascination with the buttons on his shirt. He stroked her hair, allowing the strands to pass between his bony fingers. In the quiet silence, all was peaceful again.

He asked her, very quietly, if she just might, maybe, like to stay here forever.

Her brown eyes met his and he attempted to smile behind the mask before muttering a few lines about knowing a church or two who might not object to their less-than-legal union.

For the first time in years, she cried from pure happiness.

The next day, he bought her a wedding dress, insisting she deserved a white wedding even if she was marrying the Angel of Death. He also showed her his face. He wouldn't marry her to a monster if she didn't know. She cried again and kissed him and told him she loved him even though he lacked a nose.

They were married the next day.

He cried when they consummated the relationship. It was beautiful, and he loved her all the more.

He gave up his job and dedicated himself to music for her sake: an honest living for an honest husband and an honest wife.

On their fiftieth anniversary, when he looked around at their mostly normal-looking grandchildren, playing around a Christmas tree, he reflected that they really did live happily ever after.

* * *

Author's Note:

Dear Readers,

And this is it. A bit of a re-imagining, rewrite of that Tumblr AU. I hope y'all liked it! As always I love to hear your thoughts in reviews.

sarahandmarquis


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